Exodus 21 opens the Book of the Covenant - the oldest civil law collection in the Hebrew Bible - setting out servant law, personal injury protections, and the lex talionis at Sinai. Traditionally attributed to Moses (1440-1260 BC), this chapter establishes that every human life carries irreducible dignity and that puni

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Lyrics

Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years And in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything

If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself If he is married, then his wife shall go out with him If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters The wife and her children shall be her master’s

And he shall go out by himself But if the servant shall plainly say I love my master, my wife, and my children I will not go out free

Then his master shall bring him to God And shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl

And he shall serve him forever One who strikes a man so that he dies Shall surely be put to death But not if it is unintentional, but God allows it to happen

Then I will appoint you a place where he shall flee If a man schemes and comes presumptuously on his neighbour To kill him, you shall take him from my altar that he may die Anyone who attacks his father or his mother shall be surely put to death

Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him Or if he is found in his hand He shall surely be put to death Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death

If men quarrel and one strikes the other With a stone or with his fist and he doesn’t die But is confined to bed, if he rises again and walks around with his staff Then he who struck him shall be cleared

Only he shall pay for the loss of his time And shall provide for his healing until he is thoroughly healed If a man strikes his servant or his maid with a rod And he dies under his hand, the man shall surely be punished

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot Burning for burning, wound for wound, bruise for bruise If a man strikes his servant’s eye or his maid’s eye and destroys it He shall let him go free for his eye’s sake

These are the ordinances of justice That the people may know the statutes of God And walk in his ways

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Exodus 21 sung by Psalm Selah. The whole Bible, one chapter at a time.

Published 2026-05-22 · Last updated 2026-06-06
Written by Reid Wender, Editorial Director at Psalmody Press